Falling Again
by Hiril Moon
Summary: Ianto knows that it shouldn't be possible. But he still sees it every night. IantoLisa, implied IantoJack


**Warnings for Story:** Bizarre dream sequences, symbolism, Ianto/Lisa, implied Jack/Ianto, bad writing.

**Falling Again**

The wind blew across the tops of the buildings, caressing his face and tossing his hair about playfully. He bent his head slightly to hide from the chill, but otherwise enjoyed the unusual feeling. He couldn't remember ever doing this before, except now it felt perfectly natural. Every part of this did.

"Ianto?"

Even her. Especially her.

A light laugh, free from any trace of mockery. "What are you doing?"

Lisa. _His_ Lisa. Standing beside him, living and breathing and looking exactly the way she always had. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but some small voice in his mind warned him that it wasn't allowed. Another voice said that this was impossible. Ianto ignored it.

Instead, he let the words pass through him without thought or reasoning, as if they were the memorised lines from a play from long ago. "I just wanted to see the city."

"You say the silliest things sometimes." Lisa laughed again – her achingly familiar, treasured laugh – as she stepped up next to him. Despite keeping his eyes straight ahead, he knew that she was staring out at the view as well. In a way, he was afraid to even glance at her.

He only turned to look at her when he felt her hand slip into his own. The warmth and feel of skin felt strange (_alien_) despite how much part of him insisted that this was natural (_normal_). Why shouldn't the two of them be standing up here, hand in hand?

Suddenly he flinched as the sensation changed with no warning whatsoever. The warmth vanished, replaced by the chill of hard unfeeling metal, which then shifted into the cold and disgusting touch of bone and rotting flesh. The city in front of him blurred, becoming a blood-stained corridor, a converter, an underground base, a grave…

Then as abruptly as it had disappeared, Cardiff materialized again in front of him, looking as much like a postcard as it had originally. Nothing was altered or out of place. Lisa was gazing at him with eyes full of concern, her face devoid of anything except pure and wholesome living humanity. There was nothing to worry about.

She smiled, without as much as a hint of cruelty or ridicule. "Ianto, are you alright?" He wanted to answer, but that bizarre scripted mentality refused to let him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

'_Felt, not seen,' _he thought before he could block it out or change it into something better, more appropriate for the situation. Shaking his head to try and get rid of it, he took a step away from her, almost hoping that the distance would fix it.

It didn't work. He brought his hands up to his temples as if he could physically get it out somehow. Now Lisa was moving towards him, emotional concern clear on her face. "What's wrong, Ianto?" She stretched out her hand to touch him. "What is it?"

As her fingers brushed against his arm, he felt the change once more, faster this time. Skin to metal to bone within seconds. Just one moment of contact, but he felt the chill burn itself deep into his bones.

"Stop it!"

Without thinking, he jerked away. Immediately her expression changed to confusion, even hurt, but the wonder of seeing like this at all had long been overshadowed by the growing nightmare whenever she touched him. It was exactly what she had unknowingly taught him already: Appearances could be changed the instant you felt them, like ripples in the water.

Lisa was reaching out to him, looking as if she genuinely only wanted to help him. Any other time he would have let her, only he knew what would happen if she did. Before he could stop himself, he had knocked her arm aside, sending her stumbling a few disoriented steps backwards. Normally he would simply be shocked by his behaviour, but this time…

He'd seen this so many times already.

It never changed.

"No!" Despite the knowledge that it wouldn't make any difference, Ianto leapt forwards, arms outstretched. Lisa was just outside his grasp, as she tripped and fell back over the edge of the roof. Impossibly, unnoticeably (and he had tried so hard to see when it happened), the edge had crept closer to them, so that a few steps were all it took to cover the distance and fall over the end.

He landed on his knees, skidding across unforgiving gravel that cut into his skin, leaning out over the precipice. For a few heart-stopping moments the world span around him, until he felt his hands close around her wrist.

Lisa stared up at him with eyes wide with fear. "Ianto!" she screamed.

"Do you trust me?" he asked, holding on as tightly as possible. He didn't know why he was asking or why this seemed to be the time to ask, but the script wouldn't let him say anything else. "Lisa, do you trust me?"

"Ianto, _please_!" She grabbed onto his left arm with her other hand as tears filled her eyes. She was so afraid, yet he couldn't say anything to comfort her. Just the same words again and again.

He tried to pull his arms in, trying to drag her up, trying to save her. "Do you trust me?"

Why did it matter? Whether or not she trusted him wasn't important. Her life was important. Whether she survived…

"Do you trust me?" His hands suddenly slipped, then regained their grip. Sweat was making it impossible to hang onto her, but letting go was out of the question. If he managed nothing else, he had to save her.

Then he was suddenly wrenched forwards as the weight doubled, then tripled. The warm, slippery skin under his fingers became slick steel, incredibly heavy. Fearing what he would see but unable to stop himself, Ianto looked down to see liquid metal flowing around Lisa head, hardening as it expanded, and two separate struts growing outwards and up before joining up again to shape a square. He could see the metal spreading across her body, forming an image that still haunted him in his dreams.

In his dreams…

The emotionless computerised voice cut through any thoughts that weren't pure fear. "Then we are incompatible."

"No! Lisa, no!" She was too heavy; it wasn't possible to hold on any longer; but he couldn't let her go, he needed her, she couldn't leave him…

Despite his mental protests, he felt his fingers so slowly slip free one by one. Her grip on his arm intensified for a moment, cutting deep into him, and then let go altogether. Horror-struck, he watched her fall away, too slow to react in time.

"Lisa!" He screamed her name as he frantically leant further forwards, almost past the limit after which he would have to fall himself. The temptation to do so was unbelievably strong, yet something held him back. By this point, the script dictated his actions just as much as his words.

She had vanished now, hidden by an eerie mist that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. Ignoring any logic, he stretched his hands out into the cloudy white, hoping against hope that maybe just this once…

Then, unexpectedly, his fingers closed around what definitely felt like an arm. There was something wrong though. Ianto couldn't feel flesh or metal for that matter, only a strangely familiar material. Nevertheless, he'd caught somebody, so he tried to pull them up where he could see them clearly.

When the figure finally broke though the mist though, Ianto nearly let go again in surprise. That it wasn't Lisa had been obvious, if not from the material then from the muscles underneath. He wasn't sure exactly who he'd been expecting, but it wasn't—

"Sir?" he whispered, afraid to confirm it in case he was wrong. Was he imagining all of this?

Captain Jack Harkness looked up at him, an expression of confusion clear on his face. However, once he caught sight of Ianto staring down at him, the confusion merged into an awful hatred that made the Welshman instinctively recoil.

He felt the greatcoat turn under his grip, slowly breaking loose. It made no sense but he didn't really realise what was happening until it was too late. "Not you too," he found himself begging, as if it would make a difference.

It didn't. He watched dumbly as Jack twisted himself free, unable to do anything to stop him. The look of triumph on the captain's face, still mixed with that terrible hatred, was going to haunt Ianto for as long as he could remember it.

This time he didn't try to stop it taking place immediately. He felt paralysed, stuck to the spot. It was only when Jack had completely disappeared again that Ianto dived after him, this time lunging all the way off the roof after him.

However, he just crashed against some sort of invisible wall. Rather than plunging down after the ones he had tried to save, he was left impossibly kneeling in mid-air. Raising a fist, he tried to break through to the other side, using first one, then both hands. It made no difference though.

As he tried to smash his way through the barrier, he began to hear a horribly familiar sound, getting louder even as he tried to ignore it. A strange wrenching, whirring, siren-like wail.

He stopped. "The Tardis," he muttered to himself. That was it then. The Doctor would simply sweep in and save Jack and it would all be okay. For Jack, at least.

There was really no point in attempting to get through to the other side. Nevertheless, now he tried even harder, bruising himself and then beginning to bleed against the solid surface to let himself fall like the two before him. Strangely enough, he couldn't feel any pain despite the battering.

The Doctor wouldn't save him, he knew that. He didn't care about humans, except for his companions and Jack (although his humanity was questionable at best). He certainly didn't care about Lisa. He definitely wouldn't care about a useless tea-boy.

But if Ianto could simply follow Lisa down, down to wherever she had gone…

He knew that he couldn't. But he wouldn't stop trying, even as blood splashed across the solid sky below him and the grinding sound of the Tardis filled his mind until he thought it would split his head open…

* * *

He gasped, pulling in air like a drowning man. Unfortunately, he succeeded in filling his lungs with oxygen, not water. Maybe another time.

That dream again. More of a nightmare, really. That made, what, five times in one week? Far more than that overall, he knew that much. It always started off so well, yet every time it ended badly for him.

The worst part was how close it was to reality. Losing Lisa when he'd tried so hard to hang onto her; Jack leaving without any obvious second thoughts; the Doctor sweeping in to save the day.

It was all the Doctor's fault when you thought about it. He brought the Cybermen to Canary Wharf. He ignored Lisa when she needed help. He left Jack broken, and then took him away again when Ianto thought that he was starting to fix himself.

Ianto didn't care if the alien was some sort of perfect immortal Time Lord. Whenever he had the same dream, he became more and more certain. His entire life's problems could be tracked back to one individual.

He wanted revenge. On the Doctor.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** #sigh# I'm sorry, I really am. I'm so sorry that I'm doing a full-on Doctor impression. Seriously, this was surprisingly bad. Not to mention the random Evil!Ianto at the end. Where did that come from? I don't know. I never know what's happening in these things.

So, I branch out into yet another fandom, ready to tear it apart. The interesting thing is that I have about five different ideas for Torchwood fics…And then I chose to do this one. Quite possibly the worst of them all, even in theory. I love how my mind makes no sense.

As this fic should have made quite obvious, I have two main loves in Torchwood: Jack/Ianto slash and Ianto torture. I love the guy, but when I like a character, that's when they start having bad things happen to them. No, I wasn't brought up weird. Blame it on my friends, they're even worse.

In case you were wondering why I included Lisa when I'm a slash fangirl… I actually love Lisa. Her and Ianto are incredibly cute, in a doomed way. Besides, she's cooler than other characters I can think of… coughGwencough.

Yes, I will shut up. …Just wanted to add that I do not hate the Doctor, I was in a weird mood when I finished this. It sort of happened, that's all. Ah well.


End file.
